Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, told employees that the company will have to make “tough choices” to “invest in its big priorities.” In the memo sent, he explains the recent cuts and says that more jobs could be impacted.
“Many of these changes have been announced, but to anticipate, some teams will continue to make specific resource allocation decisions throughout the year, where necessary, and some positions may be impacted,” Pichai writes.
“These job eliminations are not on the same scale as last year’s reductions and will not affect all teams,” he said. “But I know it’s very difficult to see colleagues and teams impacted.”
Pichai further comments that this year’s layoffs were to “remove layers to simplify execution and increase speed in some areas.”
The memo was obtained by The Verge. The report reached out to Google, which said it had no comment to make. The company told Reuters it had sent an email to all employees but did not disclose the contents.
Google has already made the first layoff of 2024
Last week, Google said it would lay off about 1,000 users. According to the New York Times, the cut affects the hardware, engineering, and Google Assistant divisions, among others. YouTube, for example, has had about 100 laid off, according to reports. James Park and Eric Friedman, co-founders of Fitbit, which Google bought in 2021, have also left the company.
Google says employees will have 60 days to get another job. They can apply for other positions within the company itself, but there is no guarantee that they will be accepted. As Reuters recalls, in 2023, Alphabet (owner of Google) announced plans to cut 12 thousand positions. The company has more than 180 thousand employees every year, according to data from September 2023.
Mass layoffs set the tone for big tech’s corporate decisions in 2023. Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft have also taken similar steps.
